


a mirror i built myself

by unimate



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Gen, it's june egbert actually, there's just no character tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 14:35:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22497700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unimate/pseuds/unimate
Summary: Spending time with them has always had an edge that your other interactions lack. At first you’d thought it was intimidated admiration, then attraction. And it is, in a way, both those things. Before Vriska and Terezi you'd never met girls like them. You never even thought therecouldbe girls like them.(Vriska and Terezi teach June to play FLARP)
Relationships: Terezi Pyrope/Vriska Serket
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	a mirror i built myself

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SylkWeaver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylkWeaver/gifts).



> This is in an ambiguous Epilogue timeline. So...if Terezi had found Vriska and brought her back, and Dirk didn't Ruin Everything For Everyone. And June figured out her gender shit young.

JUNE: hey! 

You raise your hand for a dorky little wave, realizing you’re doing it at the last second, and morph the gesture into a casual head scratch. Breeze ruffles the laces of your boots. You aren’t sure if your nervousness is making you do the windy thing, or if it’s just brisk out here. 

Terezi and Vriska leer at you over the threshold, superimposed against the light of the apartment like they’ve been staged for a photograph. An advertisement, maybe. Although an advertisement for what, you aren’t exactly sure, but it involves lots of teeth and the gleaming smiles of people who know you have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.

JUNE: haha, i have no idea what i’ve gotten myself into, do i? 

TEREZI: OF COURS3 YOU DO 3GB3RT  
TEREZI: UNL3SS OF COURS3 YOU D1DN’T R3AD ANY OF TH3 SUPPL3MM3NT4RY M4T3RIAL I S3NT OV3R

Terezi adjusts her glasses. They gleam as shiny as her teeth.

TEREZI: B3C4US3 1T W1LL 4LL B3 ON TH3 T3ST

JUNE: uhh…define “read”

You aren’t really sure how you get into the apartment. If the wind picks you up or one of them grabs you by an elbow. You haven’t hung out with Vriska and Terezi since, well…it’s been a long time. Listen, you had depression. Lots of people have depression, and lots of people deal with it way less valiantly than you have. Or that’s what you keep telling yourself.

TEREZI: BY R34D 1 M34N H4V3 YOU T4ST3D TH3 D3L1C1OUS 4ND 1NV4LU4BL3 KNOWL3DG3 CONT41N3D W1TH1N TH3 P4G3S  
TEREZI: OR 1N TH1S C4S3 TH3 P1X3LS ON YOUR SCR33N  
TEREZI: 4ND 1 SUPPOS3 FOR YOU 1T WOULD B3 LOOK1NG 4T TH3M 1NST34D OF T4ST1NG  
TEREZI: L1K3 SOM3 K1ND OF FUCK1NG NOOB  
TEREZI: D1D YOU DO TH4T 3GB3RT

VRISKA: Come on, who cares a8out that?  
VRISKA: It’s not going to help her!  
VRISKA: FLARP isn’t the sort of thing you can learn from a 8ook.

TEREZI: YOU L34RN3D HOW TO FL4RP FROM 4 BOOK  
TEREZI: TH4TS WH4T TH3 M4RQU1SS3S JOURN4L W4S, W4SN’T 1T?

VRISKA: That’s a totally unrelated situation.  
VRISKA: June is just incredibly lucky that she has someone like me to teach her the ropes.  
VRISKA: Otherwise what kind of hope would she have????????

You consider saying that you’d have the hope that your life wouldn’t involve playing this very silly game, but you like the current condition of your limbs. As in, connected to your body. 

You follow Vriska and Terezi through the front hall, picking your way through a jumble of boots, crocs, and hightops. Terezi’s dragon-topped cane hangs hooked on a hat rack, glaring at you with its empty eyes. A very large tortoiseshell cat blinks at you from the top of a bookshelf. 

Their house isn’t a mess, precisely. Just populated by people who don't seem to be super concerned with how things look. Cleaning projects appear to have been begun and then abandoned halfway through. An afghan is folded haphazardly on the back of the couch, but the throw pillows are scattered across the floor like they’ve been kicked there by a particularly rambunctious toddler. Or someone with the energy of one. The floor is swept, but none of the little piles of crumbs and dust have been cleared away. They’re just sitting on the tile waiting for some unwitting guest to put their feet in. Actually, that might be the point. Maybe they’re traps.

TEREZI: T4K3 4 S34T, 1N1T14T3

JUNE: um…

You aren’t sure what you’re expecting. Sometimes Rose and Kanaya host RPG nights at their hive, but you’ve never gone. See: the aforementioned depression. All of them played a lot of board games during their super cool fun-times meteor journey through space. They all have characters they’ve played for years. But you kind of couldn’t resist when Vriska got all up in your face, intense and wide-eyed in that was she can get, and asked if you wanted to learn how the _re8l gam8rs_ did it. 

Which, you actually don’t, but you also kind of do? It’s complicated. It’s always been complicated when it comes to Vriska or Terezi and either of them trying to get you to do anything. Spending time with them has always had an edge that your other interactions lacked. At first you’d thought it was intimidated admiration, then attraction. You’d be lying if you said there wasn’t any of that in there, but…

You’d never met girls like Terezi and Vriska. You didn’t think there _could_ be girls like that. 

On the kitchen table are three character sheets, a pile of dice, and a truly ungodly number of snacks. Like, way more snacks than three people could ever need. And some of them even look edible for humans! Wow, that’s incredibly nice of them to provide.

JUNE: okay, so…  


JUNE: what do we do first? 

TEREZI: H4V3 4 S34T, 3GB3RT  
TEREZI: DONT MAK3 M3 R3P34T MYS3LF

JUNE: anywhere??

TEREZI: Y3S, 4NYWH3R3!!

JUNE: cool.

You move toward the head of the table.

VRISKA: Not there, dunk8ss!!!!!!!! That’s the GM’s seat!

JUNE: right, how stupid of me, how could I have known that when you said anywhere, you meant actually just one specific place that you wanted me to sit??  
JUNE: heh. I’m such a fucking moron. 

TEREZI: 3NOUGH S4SS YOUNG L4DY.  
TEREZI: DON’T GIV3 M3 4TT1TUD3.

JUNE: or what?

TEREZI: OR TH3 DRUBB1NGS W1LL COMM3NC3!!

VRISKA: 8oth of you shut up and sit down. June hasn’t even rolled for her character yet, this is going to take all fucking night.  
VRISKA: I want to get out there!!

You look down at your sheet. Wow. There sure are a lot of words on here, and none of them make sense. In fact, most of them look made up. Vriska’s and Terezi’s sheets are covered in writing, scribbles, and cross-outs. Vriska stays in the lines better than Terezi does, but only marginally. Their characters seem to be very well-developed. You don’t bother to ask them who they are playing—you’ve already heard all about their OCs/ancestor situations. Vriska told you about Mindfang when you met over a decade ago. It’s not exactly the sort of story you forget.

VRISKA: Okay, to start off with you are gonna pick two traits.  
VRISKA: Think you can handle that?

JUNE: this is pretty complicated.  
JUNE: there’s a bunch of different choices, how does it work?  
JUNE: cast iron skillset, petticoat seagrift.  
JUNE: piss icarus??

TEREZI: THOS3 4R3 CL4SS3S, NOT TR41TS

VRISKA: And you can’t 8e a petticoat seagrift, that’s my class.  
VRISKA: No dou8les!!!!!!!!!

You drag your finger down the list of classes. There are just so many. FLARPing really is a whole world. 

JUNE: what’s your class, terezi?

TEREZI: CHUMP UP3ND3R  
TEREZI: WH1CH US3S R4SC4L1TY 4ND L3V3R4G3

JUNE: hmm. 

TEREZI: YOU H4V3 4 PROBL3M W1TH TH4T 3GB3RT?

JUNE: no, not at all.  
JUNE: it suits you, I’m pretty sure!  
JUNE: vriska, what are your classes?

VRISKA: you only have one class, dum8ass

JUNE: oh. right.  
JUNE: what are your traits?  
JUNE: sorry I got these incredibly important and not at all confusing words mixed up with each other.

TEREZI: 1 W4RN3D YOU 4BOUT S4SS D1DN’T 1 3GB3RT  
TEREZI: S4SS DO3S NOT 4DD SK1LL PO1NTS, UNFORTUN4T3LY FOR YOU.

JUNE: okay, shut up for a second.  
JUNE: let me read through these.  
JUNE: hm.

You go back to looking through the list. The classes are made by combining two skills picked from a list of ten: Vim, Appetite, Rascality, Mangrit, Dexterity, Hubris, Pulchritude, Leverage, Grace, and Imagination. Then each of those skills has an attribute description. Wow. Your head is already spinning. Maybe you should have mentioned before you started this how much you hate micromanaging in video game. You never end up using the crafting stations or maxing out any skills. Vriska is going to think you are totally lame. 

Well, she already thinks that. But she continues to message you, and still invited you over to hang out and play silly games with her and her girlfriend. So maybe it’s fine. 

You consider all of these skills and try to think if any of them intersect with you. You’ve never been great at self-analysis, but you know better than to ask Vriska or Terezi to choose for you. They’d probably pick something shitty. Besides, you’re pretty sure this is part of the test. Or game, whatever. Do you know yourself well enough to accurately give yourself a title in some fake bullshit you’re doing with your friends. 

Well, do you? 

Hmm. 

You look down at the array of choices before you. Do you have Mangrit? Dexterity? Vim? What the fuck is vim anyway? You’ve only ever seen it accompanied with vigor. Vim and vigor. Is Vim even a real word? Fuck! You barely know anything about words. Depressed people don’t know words. 

It takes you an embarrassingly long amount of time to come up with your class, during which Vriska bitches about you being soooooooo sloooooooow. Terezi cackles and eats snacks and gets jam all over her face. When you tell her about it she doesn’t wipe it off, which is probably just a flex. Eventually you settle on a class, but truth be told it’s mostly because you like its name and less because of the traits involved.

JUNE: there you go. done! 

VRISKA: Finally!!!!!!!!  
VRISKA: If this was a real game of FLARP you would have already had your ass kicked.  
VRISKA: Good thing for you we’re doing baby FLARP for wrigglers without any actual risk!!!!!!!!

JUNE: yeah, I’m pretty sure “authentic troll flarp” is illegal on earth c.

The looks on your friends’ faces make it very clear that the illegality of the activity is not actually much a deterrent to them. In fact they may be mocking you for being a fucking narc.

TEREZI: L3T’S S33 WH4T YOU W3NT W1TH  
TEREZI: UNSTOPP4BL3 PR4NKM4ST3R  
TEREZI: HOW UTT3RLY PR3DICT4BL3

JUNE: yeah, LIKE vriska being a pirate isn’t?  
JUNE: anyway I think I’ve got vim and rascality.  
JUNE: …don’t you?

They both stare you down and oh fuck, they’re right, aren’t they? You haven't been a prankmaster in years, in fact you’ve barely done a prank since before The Depression—

Both of them start cackling. As usual, you think they’re probably either psychic or they planned this. Well, you know Vriska is psychic, just not psychic in this way. Just in the bullshit way that makes people fall asleep.

VRISKA: It doesn’t matter what we think. You choose your own class, even if it sucks and makes you a huge loser.  
VRISKA: If you think you’ve got vim and rascality, then you do. 

You do! You think you do. You’ve got vim. You’re...vimorous. Vimful? Both sound bad. Anyway, you’ve got some vim. As for rascality, well, that’s just your whole vibe, right? A certain frivolous japery that not even years of feeling bad for yourself could take from you. Yes. You’ve decided. This will be you.

JUNE: heh. you know, this is actually kind of fun.  
JUNE: and way nerdier than i was expecting.  
JUNE: when i pictured alternian role-playing i always figured it would be really violent and awful.  
JUNE: and the two of you are always so forceful and loud, so it’s really easy to forget that you’re both just a couple of dorks! 

It comes out before you really think about it, and it is immediately apparent that any chance they were going to go easy on you is now absolutely out the window. Their dice rolling and snack chomping becomes even more intense. God, this game involves a lot of dice!

Eh. It’s okay. You wouldn’t want them going easy on you anyway.


End file.
